Romanticism and the Rise of Sociological Hermeneutics

Sociology Faculty Publications Sociology

Spring 1986

Dmitri N. Shalin University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected]

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Repository Citation Shalin, D. N. (1986). Romanticism and the Rise of Sociological Hermeneutics. Social Research, 53(1), 77-123. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/sociology_pubs/51

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/'lthough biblicalexegesis and rhetoric,from which modern hermeneuticsderived its firstprinciples, are ancientarts, an effortto establishhermeneutics as a universalscience, and especiallyto extendits principles to thescience of society, is of a decidedlyrecent origin. "There is littledoubt," states Gouldner, "thathermeneutics' roots in the modernera are traceableto Romanticism."1Why is thisso, whatmakes romanticism fertile groundfor hermeneutical speculations? Hans-Georg Gadamer, a leading authorityon hermeneutics,makes this intriguing suggestionabout its origins: The hermeneuticalproblem only emerges clearly when there is no powerfultradition present to absorbone's own attitude into itselfand when one is awareof confronting an alien tradition to whichhe has neverbelonged or one he no longerunquestion- inglyaccepts. . . . Historicallyit is worthyof note thatwhile rhetoricbelongs to theearliest Greek philosophy, hermeneutics cameto flowerin the Romanticera as a consequenceof the moderndissolution of firmbonds with tradition.2

Gadamerdoes notpursue the argument much further, yet his remarkoffers a clue fora potentiallyfruitful line of inquiry. Indeed, the onsetof romanticismwas markedby the break- down of a century-oldtradition. Precipitated by the French

1 Alvin W. Gouldner, For Sociology:Renewal and Criticismin Sociology(New York: Basic Books),p. 336. 2 Hans-GeorgGadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press,1976), pp. 46, 21.

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Spring1986)

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Revolution of 1789, a crisis of major proportion swept over Europe, leaving its indelible mark on virtuallyevery form of practical and spiritual life. The romantic movement was in great measure an attempt,inconclusive and contradictoryas it might seem, to come to grips with the legacy of the French Revolution. The revolutioncompelled the reappraising of the past and made imperative a conscious stance with regard to the present. It underscored the historicityand fragilityof the tradition.Most frighteningly,the revolutionrevealed the con- stitutiverole of reason, its uncanny ability to revamp the natural order of things,which establishedman as a participant observer in the drama of history.The realizationthat man is a producer as much as a product of society- this major insight of sociological hermeneutics- was first formulated by the romanticthinkers in response to the promise and the threatof the French Revolution. A few preliminaryremarks on the meaning of "romanticism" as employed in this paper are in order here. The term has been the subject of an ongoing controversysince the beginning of this century.3 Some critics see little use in it because "it has come to mean so many thingsthat, by itself,it means nothing"4- too many differentauthors are lumped together under the heading "romanticism,"too antitheticalare the ideas stamped "romantic,"too uncertain is the time span encompassing the "romantic movement." What useful pur- pose, indeed, may be served by bringingunder one head such unlikely bedfellows as Goethe, Tieck, E. T. A. Hoffman, Fichte, F. Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, A. Müller, Marx, and Novalis? Lovejoy's unhappiness with the term and his preference for the plural form "romanticisms"5

3 The historyof thiscontroversy is reviewedin René Wellek,Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1963), and LilianR. Fürst,Romanticism (London: Methuen,1969). The best substantivediscussion is stillJacques Barzun'sClassic, Romantic,and Modern(New York: AnchorBooks, 1961). 4 A. O. Lovejoy,"On theDiscrimination of Romanticisms,"inEnglish Romantic Poets: ModernEssays in Criticism(New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1960), p. 6. 5 Ibid.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 79 are quite understandable. Still, his argument overstates the case. What is peculiar about romantic thinkers,as Gouldner rightlynoted, is that "ever since Hegel, romantics have ex- pressed their distance from others by condemning them as Romantics'."6 It may be prudent to distinguish those con- sciously advancing the romantic cause (we can call them "romantics") from those who partake in it without openly subscribingto its tenets or accepting some of its forms (they may be called "romanticists"),but to deny Goethe, Hegel, or Marx a place in the historyof romanticismon account of their ambivalence about it is to engage in the "petty politics of cultural history."7Barzun hardly exaggerates when he calls Faust "a bible of Romanticism" in spite of Goethe's delib- erate attempts to put distance between himself and the romantics.8 Hegel's contempt for everything romantic not- withstanding,his Phenomenologyof Mind is an outstanding piece of romantic philosophy, deservedly included by Peck- ham among the required readings for all studentsof romanticism.9Gouldner's interestin "Marx's Romanticism"10does no violence to the historicalrealities, even though it flies in the face of Marx's well-knownantiromantic sentiments. And cer- tainlya long list of romantic writerscompiled by Isaiah Ber- lin,11 which features among others Chateaubriand, Kier- kegaard, Stirner,and Nietzsche, is no sign of his indifference to the diversityof their respective views. The greater the stature of a thinker,the more likelyhe is to be in a class by himself; classing him together with other romanticistsis not meant to suggest that he is nothingbut romantic,only that he took part in the romantic discourse, shared in the romantic

6 Gouldner, For Sociology,p. 336. 7 Barzun, Classic, p. 8. 8 Ibid. 9 Morse Peckham, "On Romanticism,"Studies in Romanticism9 (1970): 218. 10 Gouldner, For Sociology,p. 339; see also The Two .Marxisms(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1980), p. 192. 11 Isaiah Berlin,"Preface," in H. G. Schenk, The Mind ofthe European Romantics (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. xv.

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problematics,and wittinglyor unwittinglycontributed to the vastfield of idiomsand meaningswhich sprang to lifein the aftermathof theFrench Revolution and signifieda breakwith the Age of Reason. All this is not to belittlethe formidabletask facing the studentof romanticismseeking to unravel the unityof the romanticmovement. This taskis exacerbatedby the violently contradictorystatements emanating from alleged romanticists. In the same breathwe findthem asserting the autonomyof the individualand the primacyof the whole, the rightto self-determinationand the dutyto the state,personal responsibilityfor the futureand the inviolabilityof tradition.These contradictionscannot be simplycharged to the factionaldi- visionswithin the romantic movement, for they are endemicto everygenuinely romantic thinker; rather, they should be seen as a manifestationof the "contradictoriness,dissonance and innerconflict of the Romanticmind."12 It is to the creditof such studentsof romanticismas Kluckhohnand Barzun, Peckhamand Abrams,Wasserman and Schenkthat they endeavored to grasp the unityunderlying the romanticmovement withoutglossing over the artistic,intellectual, and ideological diversityof its protagonists. The followingaccount focuseson the tensioninherent in the premisesof romanticthought. Several of these premises are central to the present study. The firstconcerns the romanticists'political commitment and is predicatedon the idea that"Romanticism as well as Revolution. . . were united in theirimpassioned striving for freedom."13 Deploring revolutionaryviolence, the romanticists remained committed to the revolution'semancipatory goals. The novel elementin their politicalreasoning was the contentionthat individual freedom is not antitheticalto socialorder, that the formeris grounded in the latterand can be fullyrealized only in and through

12 Schenk, Mind, p. xxii. 10 linn., p. w.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 81 society.The second premisehas to do withthe philosophical assumptionsof romanticismand is based on the preceptthat "the romanticreaction was a proteston behalfof value."14 Whereasrationalist philosophy sought to minimizethe value componentin human understanding,the romanticthinkers proclaimedit to be the verycondition of objectiveknowledge. The notionthat knowledgedevoid of interestand a priori assumptionsis a contradictionin terms is quintessentially romantic.The thirdidea containedin romanticismis thatof organicunity. "The paradigmof 'organic'unity," according to Higonnet,is centralto "romantichermeneutics."15 I will also argue that it is centralto the entire romantictradition in sociology,insofar as it entails a new image of societyas Gemeinschaftor free discourse.The above preceptsdo not exhaustthe listof romanticpremises; arguably, though, they formthe core of the romanticteaching and are signallyim- portantfor the understandingof romanticsociology and the hermeneuticalperspective endemic to its premises.The principal taskof thispaper is to place thesein a properhistorical context.I begin with the examinationof the romanticists' attitudetoward the French Revolution.After reconstructing the premisesof romantichermeneutics, I discussthe circular natureof reasoningin romanticsocial thought.Next, I ana- lyzethe notionof Gemeinschaftas an epitomeof the romantic ideal of the futurecommunity. And finally,I share some thoughtson the continuitybetween romantictheory and twentieth-centuryinterpretative sociology.

PoliticalUnderpinnings of the Romantic Movement

The historyof the romanticmovement is inexorablytied to the Revolutionof 1789, whichcontinued to evoke passionate 14 AlfredN. Whitehead,Science and theModern World (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1938),p. 115. 15 M. R. Higonnet,"Organic Unityand InterpretativeBoundaries: Friedrich Schlegel'sTheories and Their Applicationin His Critiqueof Lessing,"Studies in Romanticism19 (1980): 164.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 SOCIAL RESEARCH response throughoutthe nineteenthcentury. The firstgener- ation of romantic thinkersgreeted the news about the fall of the Bastille with cheers and applause. To commemorate the happy events of July 14, young studentsin Göttingen- Hegel, Schlegel and Hölderlin- planted a liberty tree. Friedrich Schlegel ranked the French Revolution with"the greatestten- dencies of the age," along with Fichte's philosophy and Goethe's Meister.16Fichte praised the valeur of the French and claimed to have laid the philosophical foundation for what theyselflessly fought for in practice.17Wordsworth, deploring "the baleful influenceof aristocracyand nobilityupon human happiness and virtue," declared himself a supporter of the republic.18The feeling of euphoria, however, did not survive the third year of the revolution. The Terror struck,and al- most overnight the mood of the romanticistschanged: en- thusiasmgave way to depression, hope to despair, acclamation to denunciation. The awakening was particularlyrude for the German romanticists,who saw in the French Revolution the best hope for libertyin theircountry, still deeply ensconced in the feudal tradition. Even in England, where a good many libertiesespoused by the French revolutionarieswere in place for more than a century,the judgment of the three years of revolutionaryviolence was stronglynegative. "I abandoned France and her rulers," explained Wordsworth,"when they abandoned the struggle for liberty,gave themselves up to tyranny,and endeavored to enslave the world."19By the end of the century this sentimentprevailed among the romantic thinkers.The firstdecade of the nineteenthcentury witnessed the romanticists'turning away fromcosmopolitanism to patri-

16Friedrich Schlegel, FriedrichSchlegels Lucinde and the Fragments(Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1971), p. 190. 17"FichteanBaggesen Antwort, April, 1795, m JohannGottlieb ttchte önejwechsel (Leipzig:Haesselverlag, 1925), pp. 449-450. 18William Wordsworth, "A Letterto the Bishopof Landoff,1793, in TheProse Worksof WilliamWordsworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 3: 46. 19William Wordsworth, "Letter to a Friend,1821," in TheProse Works, Ò: 2by.

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otism,from republicanism to monarchism,from scientific ra- tionalityto Christianityand revelation. It is this metamorphosis that accounts for a still- predominantview of romanticismas a soundlyconservative movement.Thus in his studyof Goetheand his age, Lukács rarelyrefers to romanticismwithout the qualifier"reactionary";Cobban uses the terms"romantic" and "conservative"as virtuallysynonymous; Zeitlin speaks about "the Romantic- Conservativereaction" to the French Revolution;Ruggiero scolds romanticismfor "promotinga reactionarytype of thoughtinspired by the pureJunkerism"; and Briefsdeplores romanticidealism as "thephilosophy of counter-revolution."20 Mannheimmakes perhaps the mostelaborate case forroman- ticismas a paragonof conservativethought. In his important inquiryinto the stylesof social thought,Mannheim identifies conservatismwith the distrustof reason and formallogic, preferencefor qualitativethinking and dialectics,penchant for irrationalismand mysticism,and above all, with the idealizationof the past: "Actingalong conservativelines . . . means that the individual is consciouslyor unconsciously guided by a way of thinkingand actingwhich has its own historybehind it, beforeit comes into contactwith the individual."21Romanticism, or "feudalisticromanticism," as Mann- heim sometimesrefers to it, with its preoccupationwith medievalinstitutions, abhorrence of radicalchange, and sup- portof reactionarygovernments, does thenappear to be the purestspecies of conservatism. Whateverthe meritof the above interpretation- and it cer- tainlysucceeds in bringinginto focus importantaspects of romanticism- it cannot be acceptedin itsoriginal form. Mann-

20 Georg Lukács, Goetheand His Age (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969); Alfred Cobban, Aspectsof the French Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), p. 26; Irving M. Zeitlin,Ideology and theDevelopment of SociologicalTheory (Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 39; Goetz A. Briefs,"The Economic Philosophy of Romanti- cism,"Journal of theHistory of Ideas 2 (1941): 279. 21 Karl Mannheim, "Conservatism," in From Karl Mannheim(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1971), p. 153.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 SOCIAL RESEARCH heim's scheme fails to account for other facets of romantic thought that cannot be forced under the heading "conservatism."Too perceptive a thinkerto simplyignore the incon- sistencies,Mannheim acknowledges "the infiltrationof liberal ideas into the conservativesystem of thought"and admits that "liberalismallowed itselfto be penetrated by conservativeele- ments."22By and large, however, he chooses to explain away anomalous manifestationsrather than to admit the deficiency of his scheme. Yet the whole scheme needs to be overhauled if we are to understand the unique position of romanticismin postrevolutionaryEurope. The uniqueness of romanticismis not to be seen in its furnishinga rallyingpoint for the forces of the past, but in the romanticists'ingenuous effortto enlist traditionin service of the revolutionaryobjectives of the present. An interpretationthat paints romanticism as "a one- dimensional negation of liberalism and bourgeois society,"23 an interpretationfirst fully articulated in Mannheim's Habili- tationthesis and stillenjoying wide currency,fails to grasp the peculiar status of the past in romantic literature. A simple return to the past was not seriously contemplated by the romantic thinkers,certainly not as a practical option for the future. An ideal past- an organic state of feudal Europe, an amiable polis of Greek antiquity,or a harmonious community of the prehistoricpast - was to be regained on a higher level, through the negation of the present. The past of the romantics is clearlyan extension of the present,a resource skillfully manipulated to advance a contemporarycause. As Mead observed in his regrettablyforgotten study of romanticthought, the romanticists"created a differentpast from that which had been there before, a past . . . into which a value has been put which did not belong there before."24The values the romanti-

22 Ibid., pp. 167, 139. AA bteven Seidman, Liberalismand the Origin of European Social Theory(Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1983), p. 101. 24 George H. Mead, Movementsof Thoughtin theNineteenth Century (Chicago: Univer- sityof Chicago Press, 1936), p. 64. On the interfacesof Mead and romanticism,see

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 85 cistsfound in medievalEurope weretheir own, conspicuously modernvalues of autonomy,freedom, and dignityof man. Combinedwith the ancientvirtues of courage,honesty, and duty,these values were thoughtto produce the noble, har- moniousorder of the past. Nevermind that the idyllicpicture of the past was chieflythe phantomof the romanticimagina- tion;its function was to furnisha convenientvantage point for an attackon the ills of modernsociety:

The romanticswere no fools.They recognized the great accom- plishmentsofthe Enlightenment and saw the powerful potential of earlycapitalist technology. But they saw how these advances in thinkingand industrywere being used to affectand enslave theirown consciousness and behavioras wellas thoseof the peoplein general.And the[y]. . . soughtto recoverthe revo- lutionarypotential of new inventionsand foughtfor the in- formationand formation of a newsocial order which was still in transition.25

This is not to gainsaythat criticismcouched in nostalgic termslends itselfhandily to reactionaryideologies. Whatever the intentof the earlyromantics, they did provideammuni- tionto the ideologistsof PrussianJunkerism; their attacks on the institutionsof revolutionaryFrance delayedthe advance- mentof civilrights; and theirrejection of capitalismhelped to prolongthe agony of industrialtransformation in Germany and elsewhere.Still, it is imperativeto refrainfrom sitting in judgmenton theideological nature of romanticismoutside the historicalcontext. It is hardlyan accidentthat Hegel, a model of romanticconservatism in the eyes of some contemporary critics,was consideredin hisown timeas a liberaland an agent of revolution,his politicalwritings being denied posthumous publication,his influencein Germanuniversities condemned to eradicationby FrederickWilliam IV. Nor is it totallyfortu-

DmitriN. Shalin,"The RomanticAntecedents of MeadianSocial Psychology," Symbolic Interaction7 (1984): 43-65. 25 J. Zipes, "The RevolutionaryRise of the RomanticFairy Tale in Germany," Studiesin Romanticism16 (1977): 450.

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itousthat the proponentsof Stein-Hardenbergliberal reforms weresympathetic to theromantic cause. As to theromanticists' vociferousopposition to the Enlightenment,we should re- memberthat, in the nineteenthcentury, the latter'suniver- salismand cosmopolitanismwere transformed into a progres- sively coercive Napoleonic imperialism,deeply resented throughoutEurope. The ideologicalunderpinnings of the romanticmovement were "neitherof the Rightnor of the Left."26The romanticistslooked to thepast for a modelof the futurethat would be "neitherbourgeois nor feudal."27It is indicativethat thinkers of such impeccablyliberal credentials as Karl Marx,William Morris, Gustav Landauer, and Georg Lukácshave strongromantic backgrounds. All in all, romanti- cismdefies an unambiguouspolitical identification and resists attemptsto put it squarelyon one side of the ideological battlesof the day. Can we say, then,that it lacks a unifying politicaltheme? By no means. Löwy missesthis point, I believe,when he denigratesthe ideologicalmultifariousness of romanticismas "ideologicalhermaphroditism"28 ("ideological ambivalence"would be a more fittingterm). What he failsto appreciateis thatthe very attempt to riseabove theideological extremesof the Rightand the Leftis a unifyingprinciple of romanticthought. The romanticists'craving for tradition and social order is inseparablefrom theircommitment to self- determinationand freedom.This commitmentsurvived the decades of reactionand remainedas strongin the second generationof romanticthinkers - thegeneration of Feuerbach and Kierkegaard, Stirner and Marx, Emerson and Thoreau- as it was at the inceptionof the romanticera, when Schellingfirst proclaimed that "freedom is the beginningand

26 Henri Brunschwig,Enlightenment and Romanticismin EighteenthCentury Prussia (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1974), p. 183. 27 Gouldner, For Sociology,p. 324. 28 Michael Löwy, GeorgLukacs-From Romanticism to Bolshevism(Thetford: Lowe 8c Brydon Printers, 1976), p. 46.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 87 the end of all philosophy."29On this score the romanticists provedto be trueheirs of the Enlightenmentand theclassical liberaltradition. Where they parted company with their pred- ecessorswas on the questionof the relationshipbetween individual freedomand society.For the philosophersof the En- lightenmentand theirrevolutionary heirs, freedom was indig- enous,servitude was man-made;man came beforesociety and made it possiblethrough a social contract.Freedom was de- finedhere as freedomfrom, as negativefreedom or liberty thatshould be continuouslyguarded againstthe encroaching influenceof authority,state, and society.The romanticists retainedthis preoccupation with freedom, but, aftera brief period of enthusiasmabout the French Revolution,they abandoned the premisesoí jus naturaeand embarkedon a path towarda new theory,which stipulated that "a firmgov- ernmentis indispensableto freedom."30Brutal and oftenpat- entlyrandom violence in the lateryears of the revolution(as exemplifiedin the Septembermassacre of 1792) plantedthe seeds of doubtin the romanticmind as to theinherent ration- alityof reason.Liberated from external constraints and leftto its own devices,reason showed irrational,if not downright suicidal,tendencies which were conspicuously at odds withthe loftyassumptions of the philosophersof the Enlightenment. This traumaticexperience compelled the revisionof the liberal notionof freedom,which was definedas positivefreedom or "freedomfor" and proclaimedto be an end productrather thana startingpoint of humanhistory. Equally radical was the change in outlookon the relevanceof tradition.Caught betweenthe ancien régimethey deemed obsoleteand the new orderthey found inimical to freedom,the romanticists turned to a distantpast. The medievalpast of theromantic fancy had

29 F. W. J. Schelling,Vom Ich als Prinzipder Philosophie (1795) (Leipzig:Verlag von Felix Meiner,1911), p. 29. 30G. W. F. Hegel, "The GermanConstitution" (1779-1802), in Hegel'sPolitical Writings(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 234.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 SOCIAL RESEARCH little to do with the stagnant society in which the individual was permanentlylocked into his estate; this past was passé for those who believed that every man is entitled"to make oneself a member of one of the momentsof civil societyby one's own act, through one's energy,industry and skill,"31that "no man whatever ought to be compelled to any particular class, nor shut fromany."32 The past order which the romanticistscame to praise and against which they learned to judge the present was both harmonious, or in the terminologyof the epoch "organic," and at the same time perfectlyconducive to individual freedom. No one is forced here to comply; everyone followsone's native genius; societyremains forevermalleable, though changes in it come not throughthe abrupt termination of traditionbut through the gradual expansion of its confines. It is a permanent (r)evolution,accomplished throughthe continuous self-rejuvenationof reason. One can readily see why these romantic musings appealed to the reactionarypoliticians in postrevolutionaryEurope. No less apparent, however,is the liberatingcomponent of romanticism,which proved compatible with the socialist and liberal currents of nineteenth-century political discourse. The ideological perspective unifyingnineteenth-century romanticism grows out of the romanticists'determination to realize radical objectives by conservativemeans. Romanticismwas as much "a negation of the philistinesubstance and life styleof the emerging bourgeoisie and a protestagainst the utilitarian ordering of life" as it was "a reactionagainst the backward feudal ideology and conditions of authoritarianism."33The romanticistswere "innovators and revolutionists"as well as "great restorers and wise conservatives."34Their dialectical

31 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Philosophyof Right (1821) (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 133. 32 J. G. Fichte,"The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), in ThePopular Worksof Johann GottliebFichte (London: Trubner, 1889), 1: 179. 33 Zipes, "RevolutionaryRise," p. 421. 34Talmon, Romanticism,p. 136.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 89 commitmentto libertyand order is the broadestcommon denominatorthat unites otherwisediverse and openly an- tagonisticthinkers identified with the romantic movement. To be a romantic,we can say, is to believe that freedomcan coexist with necessity, diversity with unity, arid self- determinationwith social order. Romantic philosophy, with its critical- hermeneutical- thrust, was an attemptto workout a theoreticalfoundation for the practicalresolution of these antinomies.

RomanticPhilosophy and Hermeneutics

Whitehead defined the romanticattitude as "a protest againstthe exclusionof value fromthe essence of matterof fact."35This formulacaptures the gistof the romanticrevolt againstthe dominant rationalist philosophy. Man, according to the rationalists,is handicappedin his quest forknowledge by innate as well as acquired biases, prejudices,or, in Bacon's terminology,"idols," which prevent the knowerfrom seeing thingsas theyreally are in themselves.The processof under- standingcan succeed only if the knowerpurges himselfof preconceptions.The rationalmind, urged Descartes,is active to the extentthat is necessaryto curtailits own unwanted interferencewith the preestablishedorder. The universalscience of the future,as the rationalistsenvisioned it, called for faithfulobservance, not for participant observation; it stressed theactivity of res extensa, not that of res cogitans. Once themind fulfilledits purgativefunction, it was to assume its proper role,that is, to recordfaithfully the preordained movement of matteras it revealeditself to a disinterestedscientific observer. It was thisimpersonal, mechanical universe that provoked the romanticrevolt against rationalismand mechanism.The romanticistsrejected the idea that knowledgecan be freed

35 Whitehead, Science,p. 115.

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fromthe contaminatinginfluence of the processof knowing. Scientificendeavor, according to them,is not a quest for thingsthemselves and theirprimordial order; the scientific methodis not an expedientway of gettingaround the distor- tionsincurred by man'spresence in the universe.Quite to the contrary,science's true aim is to humanizenature, to make it more rational;the scientistis a participantobserver whose imprinton the outsideworld is irradicableand whoseproper role is to restoreman's responsibilityfor the worldout there. The determinationof mechanisticphilosophy to do awaywith "idols" resulted in the dehumanizationof the process of understanding.Along with human bias, the rationalistsex- cised the activeside of knowing,reducing knowledge to pas- sive reflection."The overcomingof all prejudices,"contends Gadamer, "this global demand of the enlightenment,will proveto be itselfa prejudice.. . ,"36 Herein lies the significanceof the revolutionin philosophy initiatedby Kant and continuedby his romanticsuccessors. The processof knowledge,for Kant, is selective,in that it choosesamong manyelements before it shapes theminto an object.The selectionis guided by our beliefs,preconceptions, values,and prejudices- literallyprejudgments, without which cognitionwould be impossible.What it means is thatration- alistsoverlooked an irreducibleelement of faithor value per- meatingour knowledge."I had thereforeto removeknowl- edge,"explains Kant, "in orderto makeroom for belief."37 The secretof the transcendentaljudgment a priori- the heartof Kant'ssystem - is thatit is valuejudgment, that is, a judgment whose objectivevalidity presupposes prior commitmentto certainbeliefs and values. The taskof philosophicalanalysis, then, is not to expunge value fromunderstanding and to eliminateall biasesbut to renderthem conscious, to turnthem

36Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method(New York: Crossroad,1982), p. 244. 37Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason(1781) (New York: Anchor,1966), p. xxxix.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 91 into premises.This is exactlythe task of philosophicalher- meneutics,the taskof becomingreflexive, of uncoveringprej- udices throughwhich our understandingparticipates in the productionof realityas objectiveand meaningful.When Goetheinsists that every fact is alreadya theory;when Hegel exposesas self-deceptionthe unreflexivemind's insistence on dealing with"bare facts";when Emersonscolds reason that separatesthe factfrom value; when Schlegeltakes to taskan empiricistfor his unconsciousreliance on a transcendental outlook- whenall thesegiants of the romanticera raise their objectionsto unreflexivereasoning and urgethe inescapability of prejudgments,they speak the language of hermeneutics. "This recognitionthat all understandinginevitably involves some prejudice gives the hermeneuticalproblem its real thrust."38 Romantichermeneutics, as one can gatherfrom the above, is an extensionof romanticphilosophy. Dilthey takes note of this fact,pointing out that Schleiermacher"was specifically trainedin transcendentalphilosophy which was the firstto provide adequate means for statingthe problem of her- meneuticsin generalterms and solvingit."39 The principlesof romantichermeneutics - the constitutivenature of understanding,the a priori foundationof knowledge,the unre- flexivityof consciousness,the dialecticsof part and whole- belong to the generalfund of ideas developed by romantic idealism.Transcendentalism furnished a new foundationfor hermeneutics,moving it away fromthe traditionalconcern withthe inherentproperties of the texttoward the examinationof the concealedinteraction between the interpreterand hisobject. It helpedto broadenthe scope of thehermeneutical analysisby includingin its orbitthe entirerange of cultural and naturalobjects, by treatingall objectivereality as a text

38Gadamer, Truth and Method,p. 239. 39Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Writings (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 258.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 92 SOCIAL RESEARCH waiting to be interpreted. The old hermeneutics urged the interpreterunraveling the meaning of the past to free himself fromthe contaminatinginfluence of the present; the romantic hermeneutics claimed that the past exists only through the present. The former insisted that the interpretershould approach his task unbiased and presuppositionless; the latter assumed that bias is an unacknowledged premise, and all the knower can hope for is to turn his biases into acknowledged premises. Where one aimed outward, focusing the interpreter's undivided attentionon the object, the other turned in- ward, postulatingself-reflection as a preconditionof successful interpretation.All understandingwhich is not dogmatic must begin with self-understanding.This romantic premise gives modern hermeneutics its peculiar flavor. It also points to a distinctlycritical thrust of modern- romantic- hermeneutics.

TheProject of Sociological Hermeneutics

Paul Ricouer once observed that we live "in a hermeneutical age,"40 by which he meant modern man's extraordinary preoccupation with self-reflection,démystification and criticism. The roots of this now-ubiquitousattitude can be traced to the romantic era or, if you will, to 1781, when Kant first proclaimed that "our age is, in every sense of the word, the age of criticism,and everythingmust submitto it."41The same sentimentwe find in the two generationsof Kant's successors who declared a war on "dogmatismas a way of thinking,"42on "the dogmatic tendency in man,"43and demanded "a ruthless

40 Paul Ricoeur, The Philosophyof Paul Ricoeur(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 221. 41 Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, p. xxiv. 42 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenologyof Mind (1807) (New York: Harper 8c Row, 1967), p. 99. 43 J. G. Fichte, Scienceof Know/edge (1794) (New York: Appleton, 1970), p. 161.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 93 criticismof everythingexisting,"44 "a strenuous reacquisition of thatwhich has once been acquired,"45"putting to thetest what has long since passed as establishedtruth."46 Such were the openingsalvos of the age of criticism,the hermeneuticalage. Not surprisingly,this was also the dawningof the new era of democraticrevolutions. It was the time when philosophical disquisitionswere nourished by the flames of revolution,when self-reflectionbred criticism and criticisminspired open insur- rection.The project of romantichermeneutics was firmly rooted in the revolutionarytransformations of the timeand should be judged in theircontext. A greataccomplishment of the FrenchRevolution was the doubt it cast over the divine natureof the social order and man'splace in it. In a dramaticfashion the revolutiondemon- stratedthat man's social qualities as wellas the socialorder of whichhe findshimself a part are emergent.Whether it consists of slaves and masters, noblemen and commoners, capitalistsand laborers,the social order is not ordained by God; nor are its membersearmarked by nature for their stationsin life; rather,individuals themselves generate their social order in the veryprocess of knowing,by subsuming each otherunder a prioricategories and forcingupon reality taken-for-grantednomenclatures. The institutionsof society establishedin this manner only appear to be "noumenal," subsistingon theirown; in truth,they are "phenomenal,"that is, emergent,historical, contingent on the rationalactivities of its members.It is the mind that imposes structureon the world and assures its objectivereality, and it is entirelyin man's powerto destroyhis own creation,to supplantthe old orderwith a new one. The realizationthat mind is a constitu- tiveforce was itselfan offshootof the revolutionaryera: 44 Karl Marx, "Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843," in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-EngelsReader (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 8. 45 F. W. J. Schelling,System of TranscendentalIdealism (1800) (Charlottesville:Univer- sityof Virginia Press, 1978), p. 1. 46 S. Kierkegaard,Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) (Princeton: PrincetonUni- versityPress, 1941), p. 35.

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That was an age of great destructions.When the Revolution came, many institutionswhich long seemed to be thingsin themselves,showed that they were nothingbut phenomena. And when new constitutionsand new social ordershad to be planned,the spiritof the age emphasizedthe factthat, at least in the social world,it is the officeof human intelligenceto imposeits own formsupon the phenomena,and to accept no authoritybut thatof the rationalself.47

The criticalmode of thinkingengendered in romanticsocial thoughtpredicates that societyowes its objectivereality to consciousness. A fine-spun networkof a priori assumptions and categories,according to thispremise, serves as a ground plan in terms of which the understanding generates the social world. The understanding does its job without being aware of its awesome accomplishment- it is perennially unreflexive, yet this unreflexivityis the very stuffof which social facts are made. Social realitypresents itself to the mind as a noumenon, an object unrelated to the subject or a "bare fact," yet this facticityis apparent: social facts and the social orders they comprise are brought into being by the work of our understanding. The paradox of the social world is that the society confrontingus in all its glorious externalityand unyielding thinghoodis the work of our (un)conscious activity.The whole edifice of social institutionsrests on the exceedingly shaky foundation of transcendentalbeliefs and values. "Ultimately everythingrests on a postulate,"intones Kierkegaard,48even if this postulate remains incomprehensible to the subject. An element of incomprehensibility,opaqueness, and unreflexivity is at the core of social being- expose it, and the whole order will collapse:

But is incomprehensibilityreally something so unmitigatedly contemptibleand evil? Methinkthe salvationof familiesand

47Josiah Royce, Lectureson Modern Idealism (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1919), p. 65. 48 S. Kierkegaard, TheJournals of Kierkegaard(New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 45

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nationsrests upon it. If I am notwholly deceived, then states and systems,the most artificial productions of man, are often so artificialthat one simplycan't admirethe wisdomof their creatorenough. Only an incrediblyminute quantity of it suf- fices:as longas its truthand purityremain inviolate and no blasphemousrationality dares approach its sacred confines. . . . [Everysystem] depends in thelast analysis ... on somesuch pointof strengththat mustbe leftin the dark,but that nonethelessshores up and supportsthe wholeburden and would crumblethe momentone subjectedit to rational analysis.49 It should be clear by now that social institutionsare not immuneto hermeneuticalanalysis, that social factsare per- fectlyamenable to the interpretativeunderstanding. More- over, it is quite plausible,as Rickertargued decades ago,50 that the romantic idealists derived their general prob- lematicschiefly from the social domain,on whichthey mod- eled their treatmentof nature. Transcendentalismwas inspired by the travailsof the revolutionaryage in whichthe taskof recapturingone's authorshipfirst emerged as a practical problem.Dogmatism or the unreflexivemode of beingin the worlddecried by the romanticthinkers is coterminalwith theinstitutions of theancien régime, which, toward the end of the nineteenthcentury, ceased to be perceivedas naturaland inherentlyrational and were increasinglysubjected to critical debunkingby the subjects rediscovering the constitutive power of reason. "Thing-in-itself"is a philosophicalepitome of the worldin whichthe individualis no longerat home,where he is not a masterof himselfbut an exile, condemnedto inau- thenticexistence by his own unreflexivity.He is surrounded by social facts- customs,institutions, estates, each weighing heavilyon his consciousness,demanding unequivocal respect, threateningto subdue anyone who dares to question their authenticity.Alas, this unhappy state of affairsis itselfthe

49 Schlegel, FriedrichSchlegels Lucinde, p. 268. 50 Heinnck Rickert,Science and History:A Critiqueof PositivistEpistemology (1902) (New York: D. Van NostrandCo., 1962), p. 102.

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work of the mind unconsciousof its agency.To break the mold of pseudofacticityin which the institutionspresent themselvesto the mind,the lattermust become self-reflexive. When the understandingbecomes transparentto itselfand acquiresa hermeneuticalinsight into its role as a participant observerin the orderof things,social facts lose theirimpene- trabilityand submitto rationalchange. The projectof sociologicalhermeneutics is thusfundamen- tally that of rediscoveryand emancipation- rediscoveryof authorshipand emancipationfrom the oppressiveweight of obsoleteinstitutions. The firstimpetus to this projectcame fromKant's Critique of Pure Reason and the FrenchDeclaration of Rightsof Man and Citizen.We findan unmistakableim- printof thesetwo pillars of modernityin Schelling'sattacks on dogmatism and Fichte's belief in the primacy of self- determination;in the contemptfor philistinismand compla- cencyprofessed by Novalis,Schlegel, and Tieck; in the critiqueof alienationby Hegel, Feuerbach,Stirner, and Marx;as wellas in the transvaluationof valuesattempted by Nietzsche at the close of the romanticera. When Marx announcedthat "self-understanding(equals criticalphilosophy) by our age . . . is a task for the world" and promised to reformsociety "throughthe analysis of mysticalconsciousness that is notclear to itself,"51he did not breaknew ground- he simplystated in explicitlysociological terms the mission of romantichermeneutics.Marx's iconoclastic attitude is characteristicof the secondgeneration of romanticthinkers, who weredetermined to put "thesearching knife of criticism"to everyinstitution of yesteryear.Their diction, expressly political and self- consciouslydefiant, differed markedly from the studiously metaphysicallanguage of their romanticpredecessors, but theirmessage remained essentially the same: man is an author of the historicaldrama responsiblefor his social world and

51Kark Marx, "A Correspondenceof 1843,"in KarlMarx: Early Texts (New York: Harper & Row, 1972),p. 82.

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TheDialectic of Rationality and Sociality

The enthusiasmwith which the romanticistsgreeted the breakdownof the old regime,intense and sincereas it was in the openingdays of the revolution,faded rapidlyas the news about the increasinglybloody course of eventsin Parisspread throughoutEurope. And when the measuredstaccato of the guillotinesheralded to the world the arrivalof the Terror, mostof the earlysupporters of the revolutionturned against it, feelingbetrayed and loudly denouncingthe dangerous shortcutto freedomtaken by the French. Somethingwent terriblywrong with the way the heirsof theEnlightenment set out to reclaimthe naturalrights of man. The dawn of the Age of Reason was marred by exemplaryirrationality and seeminglyrandom violence which made a mockeryof the optimisticforecasts of the prophetsof the Enlightenment. Freed fromthe restraintsof society,reason looked nothing likethe benign and constructiveforce in the serviceof natural law it was hailed to be; instead,it showeditself to be arrogant, vindictive,and utterlyself-destructive. In the wake of the Terrorthe veracity of a theorythat pictured society as deriva- tive and incidentalto the affairsof reason was suspect. Toward theend of thecentury it came underclose scrutinyby the romanticthinkers, who gave a decidedlynew - sociological- turnto the traditionaldiscourse on the natureof reason. Accordingto the rationalistmode of thinking,reason pre- cedes societyand needs no help fromit to do thejob it was entrustedwith by the Almighty.Society contaminates reason withprejudices - idols- whichonly muddle the pictureof the preestablishedharmony. To fulfillits mission,reason must breakthrough the veilsof societyand open itselfto the natural purityof thingsthemselves and theirprimordial order. By

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contrast,the romanticistsconceived of reason as socially embedded and historicallyemergent. Consciousness is permeated withprejudices and a priori assumptions,but it is only because it is so informedand guided by societythat it is the consciousness of man. Humans act consciouslyand rationallywhen they raise themselvesabove their immediate existence,place themselves in the perspectiveof the community,and, armed witha priori categories and values, transformthe flux of things themselvesinto an orderlyflow of objectivereality. Sociality is implicitin every rational act. "Gemeinschaft,pluralism is our innermost essence,"52 exclaims Schlegel; what this means is that only those forces in man are trulyrational that are medi- ated by the community. Rationalitywithout sociality,mind outside of the human community,is unthinkable. Already in Kant we find a hint that reason may be social, at least in form if not in substance. The transcendentaldomain contains cognitive constructswhich have no existence apart from the individual mind but which nevertheless transcend personal experience and claim universal validity.Drawing on these transcendental schemes of understanding, the subject can induce objectivityinto things withoutvisible recourse to any authoritybeyond himself,yet each time he raises the claim that the reality in question is objective and meaningful, he presupposes, however tacitly, that it is universally- intersubjectively- valid. When man hazards a universaljudg- ment, "he disregards the subjective private conditions of his own judgment . . . and reflects upon it from a universal standpoint(which he can only determine by placing himselfat the standpoint of others)."53 Kant would not say of course that a priori categories of reason come from society and change withtime (he obviouslythought these to be innate and

52 Quoted in Kluckhohn,Persönlichkeit und Gemeinschaft:Studien zur StaatsAuffassung der DeutschenRomantik (Halle/Saale: M. Niemeyer Verlag, 1925), p. 5. 53 Immanuel Kant, Critiqueof Judgment (1790) (New York: Bobbs-Merrill,1951), p. 137.

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unalterable),but the veryfact that they possess a powertran- scendingindividual experience and bindingon everyrational memberof thecommunity invites a sociologicalinterpretation. WithKant's romantic followers the social and historicalna- ture of reason is alreadya matterof unshakableconviction. Reason evolveshistorically, along withthe human community, and embodiesthe collectiveforces of society,even thoughits immediateexpression is individual.The transcendentalpower of mind,the power to convertthings in themselvesinto ob- jects,is socialin formand content.Beyond the transcendental judgment a priori stands a community(real or potential) whichdelegates its authorityto its membersand gives them confidenceto treat the realityin question as objectiveand meaningful.Every thought, precept, or deed thatpasses the testof rationalityhas its beginningand end in society.Even the most intimatenotion of self, according to romantic thinkers,is of social origins:"The self perceivesitself at the same timethat it is perceivedby others.. . . Self-consciousness existsin itselfand foritself ... bythe very fact that it exists for anotherself-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledgedor recognized."54"Only by meetingwith, so as to be resistedby, Another, does the Soul becomea Self.What is Self-consciousnessbut to know myselfat the same moment thatI knowanother, and to knowmyself by means of knowing another,and vice versa."55 It would be wrong to infer from the above that, while reason needs societyto performits function,society endures on itsown, independently from individual minds. Each society has an enormousstake in cultivatingits members'rational faculties- suppressthem, and it withersaway along withthe reasoningpowers of individuals.Society is a perpetuallyre- newed communityof minds accomplishedthrough the ra-

54Hegel, Phenomenology, pp. 661, 229. 55 S. T. Coleridge,quoted in K. Coburn,The Self -Conscious Imagination (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1974), p. 32.

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tional activitiesof individuals. The thesis of the inherent so- cialityof reason, consequently,requires a dialecticalinversion: just as reason is social through and through, so is society permeated with reason. The individual is a responsible member of society to the extent that he acts rationally,and society is an objective and meaningful whole as long as its membersshare rationales for action. External and petrifiedas the social order may seem, it remains a product of ongoing rationalizationat every moment of its existence. In the language of philosophical hermeneuticsthis proposition reads as follows:"What is rationalis actual and whatis actual is rational.1156 In the sociologicalparlance it can be statedthis way: "Activity and mind,both in theircontent and in theirmode of existence, are social: socialactivity and socialmind."57 Rendered freely, thismeans thatsociety persists as long as it is projectedinto the meaningfulactions of itsmembers and ceases to existas an objectivewhole when individualsdeny its inherentrationality and refuseto abide by the a priorischemes of understanding in whichit has been traditionallycast. There is a bodyof opinion,both popular and scholarly,that depictsromantics as narcissistic,oblivious to the problemsof communityat large, antisocialin theirbasic impulses.This viewis hopelesslyone-sided. Much closer to the truth,I think, are those commentatorswho contendthat "the longingfor communityis one of the mostimportant themes in Romanti- cism,"58that "in everydefinite sense we can speak of this philosophy... as one whichis socialin itscharacter."59 True, the romanticistsare preoccupiedwith self-reflection and place an inordinateemphasis on subjectivity,but thisromantic con- cern does not implyan a-socialbias; if anything,it is due to the romanticists'acute sense of responsibilityfor the fate of

56 Hegel, Philosophyof Right,p. 10. 57 Karl Marx, Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers,1964), p. 138. 58H. Staten,"Newman on Self and Society,"Studies in Romanticism18 (iy/y): by. 59 Mead, Movementsof Thought,p. 147.

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the communityand reflectstheir belief that the actionsof the individualcount. This goes not only for the championsof publiccauses such as Fichte,Hegel, and Marx,but also forthe "archindividualists"like F. Schlegel,Kierkegaard, and Emer- son. Even Max Stirner,the prophetof modernegoism, re- serves his most eloquent rhetoricfor the descriptionof "union"- the futurecommunity of freespiritual beings. Con- cern forsociety is embedded in the romanticframe of mind. Whatis differentabout the romanticists'treatment of society and reason is the radical mannerin whichthey welded the twointo one continuum.The romanticistsfound the seeds of societyat the nub of consciousnessand discernedthe imprint of reasonon the fabricof the socialorder. They discovereda newdomain (they called it "transcendental")where reason and societymeet, becomingone, a realm of what we now call values,the locus of whichis intraindividualbut the substance of which is extraindividualand intersubjective.This is a paradoxicalrealm comprising all thoseprelogical and largely taken-for-grantedcategories in termsof whichwe make sense of the world and which tie us togetherinto a community. Through thisdomain societyenters the individual,leaving a depositof rationalitythat makes man trulyhuman. Both reason and societyappear to be sui generis,yet neither can exist byitself, and each is inexorablytied to itsother. The twogrow together,sometimes locked in bitterdispute, sometimes peace- fullycoexistent, always mutually constitutive. This reasoning was a methodologicalexpression of the romanticists'political ambivalence,of theirdesire to mediatebetween the conserva- tivethesis and the radicalantithesis. "Dialectical" and "mediatory"are virtuallysynonymous in romanticidealism. The whole approach can be seen as a deft attemptto safeguardthe emancipatorylegacy of the FrenchRevolution from its violent excesses by substitutinghermeneutical philosophyfor the shallowcontractarianism of the Enlighten- ment.Rejecting the politicalideology of the Left,the romanti- cistscontended that human society is not a mechanicalaggre-

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gate of individuals but an organic whole, the members of which are bound togetherby a continuous thread of tradition, a way of thinkingand feeling that is ingrained in every mind and that cannot be dislodged by revolutionarydecrees. At the same time,they shunned the reactionaryideologies and urged the inevitabilityof social change, therebyserving notice on the ideologistsof the old regime that the traditionalways of doing things cannot be petrified by repressive measures any more than they can be legislated by the overzealous guardians of natural rights.An offshootof this dual political agenda was their hermeneuticallygrounded social theorywith its dialectical, mediatory stance and a characteristicemphasis on the organic nature of the relationshipbetween reason and society, libertyand order, traditionand social change.

RomanticOrganicism and theHermeneutical Circle

In the Occidentaltradition, society was oftencompared to an organismand treatedas a wholewhich, as the sayinggoes, is alwaysmore than the sum of itsparts. To be sure,the will of the individualwas instrumentalin settingsociety in motion, but once established,it was to persistas a collectivebody charged withultimate power to coerce its membersin the interestsof the whole. From Plato to Aristotle,through Au- gustine and Aquinas, to Hobbes and Saint-Simon,this metaphorprovided a guidinglight to theoristssearching for an ideal of social peace and harmony.The messageit con- veyedwas a simpleone: therewill be no peace and harmony until individualsare subordinatedto society,as parts of an organismare subordinatedto the whole.A healthysociety, as seen in thisperspective, is the one thatis insulatedfrom the willsof itsindividual members. The imageof organicsociety we findin romanticliterature is of a strikinglydifferent nature. The individualis cast here notonly as an actorbut also as an author;he is a self-conscious

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 103 and criticalbeing endowed witha right- and duty- to judge for himselfmatters of state.A healthysociety is not the one wherethe willof the individualis subordinatedto the willof societybut wherethe willof the wholecoincides with the will of theindividual. The wholeis morethan the sum of itsparts, romanticistsconcede, but it is also less thanany of itsindividual members.For the humanindividual is a social being,"he belongsto more than one world . . . traversesmany systems and encirclesmany a sun."60He is "the livingspecies," the knowerand the subjectwho "treatshimself as a universaland thereforefree being";61"to him his species,his essentialna- ture, and not merely his individuality,is an object of thought."62To cast him as a part indifferentto the whole is thereforeto deprivethe individualof his true dignity.The organicanalogy thus loses much of its customarybiological connotation,becoming more akin to the metaphorof the micro-and macrocosm:"The individuallives in thewhole, the whole in the individual.. . . Societyis nothingbut social life: an invisible,thinking, and feelingperson. Each man is a small society."63"Man is no abstractbeing squattingoutside the world.Man is the worldof man, the state,society. . . . Man, muchas he maytherefore be a particularindividual, . . . isjust as mucha totality- the ideal society- thesubjective existence of thoughtand experiencedsociety for itself."64 The thingthat strikesone most about these credal state- mentsof romanticorganicism is theircircular character: the wholeis looked at here throughthe prismof its parts,while the propertiesof the part are explicatedthrough the whole.

60 F. D. E. Schleiermacher,Schleier mâcher' s Soliloquies (1800) (Chicago: Open Court, 1957), p. 47. 61 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 112. 62 P. J. A. von Feuerbach, The Essenceof Christianity(1841) (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 2. 63 Novalis, Schriften:Das PhilosophischeWerke (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960), p. 66. ö* Karl Marx, Critiqueoj Hegeis Philosophyof Right(Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1967), p. 131; Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts, p. 138.

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The circle involved in this reasoning is neither vicious nor unintended. It can be understood as a special case of what Schelling called "the circle of knowledge," or what is now betterknown under the name popularized by Schleiermacher as "the hermeneutical circle." The term refers to a circular path the mind is forced to travel in pursuit of meaning. Thus the exact sense of a word becomes clear to an interpreter through its context, the meaning of a sentence through the whole text; the text is understood when the author's intent and a priori assumptions are known, which, in turn, presupposes knowledge of the cultural tradition that shaped the author's imagination. To comprehend the total cultural context,we have to travel in the opposite direction, startingwith the larger whole and makingour way to the individual parts. The understandingen route to full knowledge thereforetravels in circles: "Complete knowledge always involves an apparent circle that each part can be understood only out of the whole to which it belongs, and vice versa. All knowledge that is scientificmust be con- structed in this way."65Schleiermacher did not explore the implicationsof this principle for the study of society; nor did his sociologically minded contemporaries draw on his hermeneutical writings.Still, we can say with confidence that Schleiermacher's theory of the hermeneutical circle and romanticsociology share a common heritageof transcendental idealsm and help appreciably to illuminate each other. The principle of the hermeneutical circle, Schleiermacher contends,covers all formsof intercourse,past and present,where people make sense, exchange meaning, and produce order out of seemingly incongruous individual acts. Social intercourse, as seen in this perspective,is the hermeneuticalpro- cess whereby individuals produce a sense of the whole and establish the universe of meaning intelligibleto every participant.

65F. D. E. Schleiermacher,Hermeneutics: The HandwrittenManuscripts (1805-33) (Missoula:Scholars Press, 1977), p. 42.

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By the same token,society is a universeof discourse.The term"universe" (literally, one verse)favored by the romantic thinkersis veryindicative in thisrespect: it hintsat the Logos, the Word thatunites disparate individuals into a socialwhole. To be grasped hermeneutically,this whole must be "lived through[erlebt] and not just apprehendedand explained[erkannt und erlernt]11;it must be studiedby the knowerwith "a feeling forvalue and meaning."66The hermeneuticalscholar appro- priates as his own the universeof meaning generatedby others.He learnsto discernthe meaningfulactions of individuals behindthe mostrigid institutions of the state.Cut down to size by his interpretativegaze, the statewill no longerawe him withits Leviathanicvastness; rather, he will see it as a livingreality. Society will unfold before his eyes as a processof articulationin the course of which individualsgrasp their identitiesas membersof the same universeof meaning.The successivegenerations of individualspartake in thisprocess, bound by a commonheritage of language and meaning,yet neverfailing to leave a markon it. Whilethey continue to rely on customaryterms and apply time-honorednomenclatures, societypersists as a patternor structurewith all the appearance of an eternalthing-in-itself. This is just an appearance, however.Society's customary being is routine,not extem- poraneous;it is perpetuatedby the participantswho are not bound irrevocablyto the terms of their discourse. New nomenclaturesare devisedand broughtto bear on the familiar situations,assuring the flowof change.What this means is that"just as societyproduces man as man,so is societyproduced by him."67 If there is a single ideologicalimperative underlying the circularmold of romanticthought, it is the determinationto place the individualand societyon equal footing.Behind the

BBAdam H. Müller, Die Elementeder Staatskunst(1809) (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1922), p. 16. h< Marx, Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts, p. lô/.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 106 SOCIAL RESEARCH organic imagery of romantic social theory one senses the craving for freedom qualified by responsibility,the longing for continuitypunctuated by change. Man-the-microcosm,the part coequal to the whole, the species being- this unmistaka- bly romantic terminologyhas all the markings of the post- revolutionaryera. It reflectsthe sentimentof those who reject the revolutionaryand the reactionaryalike. The language of romanticismconfers on the individual a crushingresponsibility for the well-beingof the whole society. At the same time, it stipulates that man's liberty is contingent on his ability to embrace the whole, to incorporate its ways into his self. In choosing thislanguage, the romanticistsconsciously break with the classical dichotomyof the individual and society,for which they substitutea dialectical view that posits the two as thesis and antithesis,as aspects of the same process of the production of social reality. The species being celebrated by the romanticistsis a conscious being, willinglysubmitting to the necessity of law, not because this law is ordained and en- forced by an external authoritybut because it stands to reason. A sovereign and citizen at the same time, he is, above all, a self, a subjective being of society conscious of itself: "The Romantic philosophy pointed out that the self, while it arises in the social experience, also carries withit the veryunity that makes societypossible, . . . that societyis nothingbut an orga- nization of selves."68

Gemeinschaftas an Ideal ofFree Discourse

The image of Gemeinschaftformed in manya head by the prolificliterature on the subjectis that of a communityof individualsbound togetherby personal,emotional ties, going leisurelyabout the businessof life,insulated from the hustle and bustleof industrialcivilization, and generallyantithetical

68 Mead, Movementsof Thought,pp. 125, 101.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 107 to thespirit of modernity.The impressionof an antimodernist bias is exacerbatedby the medievalsymbolism that crops up in the rhetoricof Gemeinschaft.Contrasted to the latteris the image of an impersonal,money-bound, legalistic Gesellschaft symbolizingthe modern way of life. The final conclusion seems inevitable:one is dealing with a solidlyconservative idea, masqueradingas a historicaldescription but intended chieflyas ideologicalammunition against the forces of moder- nityand social change. This commonview, much of which originatesin neoromanticliterature, does not withstanda criticalexamination. That theromanticists spoke in hostileterms about the age oí the machine,despised utilitarianism,and scorned bourgeois philistinismgoes withoutsaying. It is also true that they praised the virtuesof medievalculture and bemoaned the passingof theorganic state. It is emphaticallynot true that the romanticistsentertained serious hopes for the revival of medievalinstitutions, or thatthey rejected modernity as such. The romanticnotion of Gemeinschaftwas an explicitlynorma- tive constructwhose criticaledge was directedagainst the reifiedconditions of modernlife. The unfoldingof bourgeois societyaccorded ill withromantic ideals, and as the gulfbe- tween these ideals and bureaucraticrealities widened, the romanticistsdid not hesitateto denouncewhat they perceived to be a perversionof socialintercourse. The romanticidealists longedfor a socialorder that would be neitherbourgeois nor feudal. Their views were anticapitalist,insofar as the capitalismof the timewas synonymouswith the degradation of humanconditions, but they were also antiauthoritarianand thereforeinimical to the spiritof the Middle Ages. Their mistrustof industrialismand capitalismdid not blindthem to the emancipatorypotential of the machine.And theircon- temptfor bourgeois philistinism was morethan offset by their deep respectfor the freedomsof conscienceand religionthat were bourgeoisto the core. Call themUtopian or idealisticif you will,but not reactionary.Even the label "conservative"

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 108 SOCIAL RESEARCH does not fullyapply to the proponents of Gemeinschaft,whose commitmentto the ideal of free discourse was nothing short of revolutionary, and whose main target- bureaucratic ossification- was as sure a sign of modernityas there could be. The reification of the state was the main target of the romantic critique in the 1830s and 1840s. So strong was the antistatesentiment in this period that it is sometimestaken as a sign of a break between the firstand second generations of romanticists. The split, however, is largely apparent. All romanticistswere propelled by the same longing for an organic relation between man and society. The romanticistsof the 1840s turned against the state only aftertheir hopes for its imminenttransformation into an organic whole were dashed. The iconoclasticattitude toward the stateand bureaucracywas already evident in early romantics who lived long enough to witness the distortionof their ideals in the Napoleonic and Prussian states. As early as 1823 Schlegel lamented that the modern state resembles "an all-directingand all-ruling law machine- and decree factory- whose sovereign power should subjugate all thingsdivine and human. . . ."69An echo of these jeremiads can be heard in Marx's attack on "the spirit of bureaucracy" permeating modern society,Stirner's philippics against the state as a "true personality" more real than the individual,as well as in the antistatistdeclarations of Emerson. The target of this criticismwas not so much the state as the stiflingeffect of the bureaucratic social order on the individual. A specimen, a member of a class, modern man seemed to the romanticistsof the second generation a bittercaricature of the image of "the livingspecies" theycherished so much: "The individuals have only the value of specimens of the same species or genus; . . . what you are ... as a unique person must be- suppressed."70 "The individuals of a class [exist] only as

69Quoted in H. G. Schenk,"Leviathan and the EuropeanRomantics," Cambridge Journal1 (1948): 247. 70Max Stirner,The Ego and His Own(1845) (New York: Harper& Row, 1971),p. 215.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 109 average individuals,only in so far as theylived withinthe conditionsof existenceof theirclass - a relationshipin which theyparticipate not as individualsbut as membersof a class."71 "Our age has forsakenthe individuals.. . . There are no more individualsbut only specimens.. . . Man's kinshipwith deity[is forgotten]."72 Underlyingall these lamentationsis a themethat has become closelyassociated with romantic thought - the themeof alienationand reification.Reification is a pathologicalsymp- tomof the modernage, a statein whichsociety appears to its membersas a noumenon,an externaland coerciveentity, and not as a livingwhole responsiveto its members'needs and wishes.The stateconfronts one here as an omnipotentbeing to be revered,obeyed, and fearedby mere mortals.In these reifiedconditions, free discourse is greatlyimpeded: it grows compulsive,is marredby deep enmitybetween the partici- pants,and is subjectto frequentbreakdowns. The individualis forcedto takepart in thisdiscourse against his will,producing sense that makeslittle sense to him personally,generating a realityhe experiencesas a threat.Alienated from his universal essence,he is reduced to a cog in a superhumanmachine. Life, reason, power- everything that belongs to the individualis delegatedto thislifeless automaton that hovers in the Platonicrealm of everlastingbeings, exhorting men to selflessefforts on itsbehalf. The rootof the modernpredica- ment,as romanticistssaw it, is reason'sunreflexivity, the fact that"we firstshare the life by whichthings exist and after- wardssee themas appearancesin natureand forgetthat we have shared theircauses."73 The weightof social facts,mag- nifiedby the powerof tradition,prevents the individualfrom seeinghis own imprinton theway things are. To challengethe

71 Kark Marx, The GermanIdeology (New York: International Publishers, 1947), p. 75. 72 Sjziren Kierkegaard, The Point of View of My Work as an Author: A Report to History (1848) (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 111. 7} R. W. Emerson, Emerson's Essays (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1961), p. 46.

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realityof socialfacts, he wouldhave to questionthe rationality and goodjudgment of otherbeings with whom he partakesin thesame socialintercourse. The widerthe social discourse and the communityof assumptionsbehind it, the more thinglike the socialreality, and the greaterthe fear of committinglapsus judicii.No wonder"mankind is shyof self-analysis,and many people trembleslavishly when theycan no longerdodge the question . . . what they have become, and who they really are. . . . The spell of life and of the world is upon them."74 It is againstthe backdropof this heartlessworld that we shouldjudge the ideal of an organiccommunity, whose roots the romanticistssought in the past but whose fullrealization theytied to the future.The termGemeinschaft had not yet acquiredits common meaning, but thevision of a harmonious communityit had come to signifywas alreadyin place. Fichte called it "the universalcommonwealth," Schleiermacher "the communityof freespiritual beings," Müller "an organicstate," Marx "communism,"Stirner "union," Thoreau "perfectand gloriousstate," Emerson "a nationof men unanimouslybent on freedom."Differing in a numberof importantrespects, the authorsof theseprojects agreed on one keypoint: the society of the futureshould be a universalcommunity, an ever- expandinguniverse of discoursethat existed for its own sake, excluded no one, and drew everyhuman being in its orbit. The foundationof this social order would not be the social contractof thephilosophes "but an ever-originatingSocial Con- tract,"an alliance that is "perpetuallyand at everymoment renewed and therebyreestablished through new freedoms that springto life along the old ones."75"It is not another State . . . that men aim at, but their Union, this ever-fluid unitingof everythingstanding . . . intercourseor union."76The new socialorder creates "the real basisfor rendering it impos-

74 Schleiermacher,Soliloquies, p. 26. '° Coleridge,in KathleenCoburn, Inquiring òpint (loronto: Universityor 1oronto Press),p. 316 and Müller,Elemente, p. 147. 76 Stirner,Ego, pp. 138, 212.

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sible thatanything should existindependently of individuals, in so far as thingsare onlya productof the precedinginter- course of individualsthemselves."77 How can thisideal be realized?A basicpremise of romantic hermeneutics - reason is social, societyis rational- already suggestsan answer:If it is truethat reified social institutions are "thoughts[that] had become corporealon theirown account,"that the stateis "a fixed idea . . . that has subjected man to itself,"78then to bring down ossifiedsocial reality reasonmust recognize its involvement in the objectivityof the social world- it mustbecome self-reflexive.The knowercon- quers the Leviathanof the statewhen he appropriatessocial realityas his own and refusesto identifywith it. The species being, a subjectivebeing of societyconscious of itself,man only needs to alter his self-consciousnessto bring about changesin society:"The idols existthrough me; I need only refrainfrom creating them anew, then they exist no longer."79 The foremosttask of the day is "self-examination:becoming consciousof oneself,not as individualsbut as mankind."80 This task of criticalself-reflection is firstaccomplished by a greatman. A seer,a prophet,a rebel- a greatman is always an individualwho managesbefore others to breakthe spellof oppressivesocial reality.What distinguisheshim fromother disaffectedindividuals is his abilityto penetratethe sacred domainof the transcendentala priori,to cast shadowon the taken-for-grantedrationality of a tradition,to effectthe "Transvaluationof All Values."81The romantichero is a vir- tuoso of self-reflectionand self-transcendence;he does not merelyforecast the future, he caststhe future by recasting old schemesof thoughtand broadcastingthe new ones. Single-

77 Marx, GermanIdeology, p. 70. 78 Stirner,Ego, pp. 237, 59. 79 Ibid., p. 223. 011 FriedrichNietzsche, The Willto Power (1901) (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 316. 81 Friedrich Nietzsche,"The Genealogy of Morals," in The Birthof Tragedyand The Genealogyof Morals (1887) (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p. 296.

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handedlyhe can supplythe versesfor the futureuniverse of discourse."The givenactuality has completelylost its validity [for him]; it has become for him an imperfectform which everywhereconstrains. . . . [He] has advanced beyond the reach of his age and opened a frontagainst it."82 His task, however,is not fullyaccomplished until he isjoined byothers, that is, until the awakening from the dogmatic slumber spreadsthrough society. That is whenself-reflection and self- change translateinto revolutionarychange, when "the coinci- dence of thechanging of circumstancesand of humanactivity or self-changing[transpires] as revolutionarypractice."** A genuinerevolution is a crisisof objectivityon a mass scale, a practicalaccomplishment of an armyof alienatedhuman beings refusingto subsume themselvesunder the customary classificationsand to lend their faces to dramatizingthe familiarsocial realityas objective and meaningful.Revo- lutionarylabor denaturalizesthe social order, converting thingsin themselvesback intoconcrete historical phenomena. And it accomplishesthis feat not throughphysical force but throughthe powerof reason. It is strikinghow thoroughlyconvinced the romantic idealistswere in the peacefulnature of theirendeavor. The most hot-headedof them were at pains to emphasize the peaceful character of their revolution. The radical transformationof society,insisted Marx while he was still underthe sway of romanticidealism, involves nothing else but the reformof consciousness,[which] consists solely in lettingthe worldperceive its own consciousnessby awakeningit from dreamingabout itself, in explainingto it itsown actions. . . . Reformof consciousness. . . throughanalysis of mysticalcon- sciousnessthat is notclear to itself. . . . Self-understanding... is thetask for the world and forus. Whatis at stakeis a confes-

82 SjzfrenKierkegaard, The Conceptof Irony (1841) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. 278. 8:J Marx, German Ideology, p. 198.

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sion,nothing more. To get its sins forgiven,humanity only needsto describethem as theyare.84

Just that- the confession and the reform of consciousness- and the whole of societywill be transformed,as if by magic,into somethingmore rationaland infinitelymore humane.Thoreau and Emersoncould notagree more."Peace- able revolution"is the termThoreau aptlyused to describe the revoltof reason against a societythat had become im- perviousto the wishesof its members("civil disobedience" is itsother, more familiar name): "In fact,I quietlydeclare war withthe state,after my fashion.... I simplywish to refuse allegianceto the state,to withdrawand stand aloof fromit effectually."85In the language of Emerson,one should be a "nonconformist"in order to effectsocial change,that is, one muststop "conformingto usages thathave become dead to you" and playing the "game of conformity."86For Kier- kegaard,revolution is also chieflyan affairof the mind; it is begun by an ironist,a masterof self-transcendence,who en- deavors to throwoff "the weightof objectivity"and destroy "theactuality he hostilelyopposes"; his role is "prophetic,. . . forhe constantlypoints to somethingfuture," but he cannot achievehis taskof tearingdown the obsoleteactuality alone; this is the task for a people.87Of all the romantics,Stirner takesthe mostradical scalpel to the reifiedsocial institutions, vowingto destroy"fixed ideas" whateverform they take - "people,""party," "society" itself; but radicalas his ends are, theycan stillbe achievedby the same "peaceable" means of self-awakeningand self-transcendence:'"Higher powers' exist only throughmy exaltingthem and abasing myself.. . . All

84 Marx,"A Correspondenceof 1843,"p. 81. 85Henri Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" (1847), in ThePortable Thoreau (New York: VikingPress, 1947), pp. 123, 131. 86Emerson, Essays, pp. 35, 2-3. 87 Kierkegaard, Concluding,p. 62; Conceptof Irony,p. 278.

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slavesbecome free men as soon as theyno longerrespect their masteras master."88 With all theiriconoclasm and extremism,spurred by the upsurgeof publicdiscontent in the 1830s and 1840s,the late romanticthinkers remained true to the spiritof idealism, sharingtheir predecessors' belief in the constitutivepower of reason,man's potential for self-renewal, and the possibilityof evolutionarychange. Behind theirrhetoric we findthe same abhorrenceof revolutionaryviolence and desireto transform the worldpeacefully that informed the politicalsensibilities of earlyromantics who sufferedthe traumaof the Terror.The imageof "trueGemeinschaft" was a guidinglight in the romanticists'quest fora societythat makes violence and compulsion obsoletein all its forms,and it is thisquest thatled themto rediscoverthe value of traditionand social order. Far from beingan expressionof the reactionaryideology of the forces defeatedin theFrench Revolution and marchingcrabwise into the future,the notionof Gemeinschaftwas an attemptat cre- ativereappraisal of the past withan eye to securingthe eman- cipatorygoals of the future. These goals, reflectingthe romanticists'unshakable conviction in the dignityof man, wereas modernas the meansof furtheringthem were peace- fuland idealistic.All reasonhad to do to secureits ends was to realize its constitutivepower and break the veil of facticity surroundingobsolete social institutions.The battle for the communityof thefuture had to be foughtand won noton the barricadesbut in the mindsof individuals- itwas to be a battle of reasonagainst itself, "the battleof reason ... to breakthe rigidityto whichunderstanding has reduced everything."89 The romanticquest for an organiccommunity brings into clear relief what Ricoeur calls the "double edge" of hermeneutics:its penchantfor suspicion and its longingfor cer-

88Stirner, Ego, pp. 223, 168. 89 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Logic: Being Part of the Encyclopediaof the Philosophical Sciences(1817) (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1975), p. 53.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 115 titude.90It also bringsto the forea quixotic,Utopian element in romantichermeneutics, manifested in its proponents're- lianceon reasonas a sole meansof socialreconstruction. The romanticistsvastly underestimated the resilienceof the bu- reaucraticstate and thereadiness of theextant powers to heed the demandsof reason. Their confidencein the abilityof all people, regardlessof class, culture,and ethnicheritage, to come togetheron ideologicallyneutral grounds of reasonwas badlyshattered by the flowof history.The logisticsof awakeningand self-transcendenceproved to be far morecomplex than theiroptimistic declarations implied. And so it should come as no surprisethat, when the revolutionarytide of the 1840s subsidedwithout bringing down the much-despisedin- stitutions,a crisis of romanticthought ensued. The declineof romanticismin the midnineteenthcentury was in large mea- surea productof a disillusionmentwith the efficacy of idealism as a meansof socialreconstruction. The mood of hopelessness palpable everywherein Europe at this time acceleratedthe dissolutionof romanticism,which, in the second half of the nineteenthcentury, broke into several divergent, ideologically incompatiblecurrents of thought. Marx's historicalmate- rialism,Morris's guild socialism,and Bakunin's anarchism representedthe movementto the leftfrom the romanticcen- ter; the volkishmysticism and racial theoriesof Lagarde, Langbehn,and List reflectedthe parallel movementto the right.The materialist,urban, and internationalistviews of the formercontrasted with the conservative,nationalist, and mili- tantlyantimodernist leanings of the latter.Both the left-and right-wingsuccessors of the romanticmovement turned away fromthe mediatoryspirit of romantichermeneutics, embrac- ing the spiritof partisanshipand showingan increasingreadi- ness to employviolence as a vehicleof socialchange. And the heritageof romantichermeneutics? It receiveda new lease on lifein thelate nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuries, thanks

90 Ricoeur, Philosophy,p. 234.

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to the effortsof WilhelmDilthey and a brilliantpleiad of his Germanand Americandisciples who resurrectedthe spiritof romanticidealism in the traditionof interpretativesocial science.

Romanticismand Early-Twentieth-Century InterpretativeSociology

The impactof romanticideas on modernsocial thought was facilitatedby the revivalof interestin transcendentalidealism, whichshaped much of the intellectuallandscape in the late nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuries, in both Europe and the United States.This impactwas feltmost immediately in the program of cultural studies initiatedby Dilthey and popularized by Windelband, Rickert,Simmel, and Max Weber.It is also clearlydiscernible in earlyAmerican sociology, whichderived its inspirationat least in part fromits German counterpart."The purest vein of Romanticismin Americansociology," points out Gouldner,"is ... to be found in the 'Chicago School,' which had the most concentrated exposureto the Germantradition and was,in fact,established by many(A. W. Small, W. Y. Thomas and R. E. Park) who weredirectly trained in it."91We mayadd to thisthat Mead, a lifelongstudent of romanticphilosophy, studied with Dilthey and at one timeseriously contemplated writing a dissertation underhis guidance,while Cooley, himself not a Chicagoanbut a figureinfluential among the Chicago interactionists, was a strongadvocate of "sympatheticunderstanding" - a procedure bearingan uncannyresemblance to the methodof Verstehen. The proponentsof culturalscience and socialinteractionism

91Gouldner, For Sociology, p. 345. The impactof idealistthought on interactionist sociologyis discussedin DmitriN. Shalin,"The Genesisof Social Interactionismand Differentiationof Macro- and MicrosociologicalParadigms," Humboldt Journal of Social Relations6 (1978): 3-38, and "Pragmatismand Social Interactionism,"American SociologicalReview 51 (1986).

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 117 shared ground witha contemporaneouscurrent of thought sometimesreferred to as neoromanticism,which was particu- larlystrong in Germany,although some elementsof it can be detectedin the Populistand the Progressivemovements in the United States. Its distinguishingcharacteristics included a keen concernfor the ossifyingpropensities of bureaucratic rationalization,an aversionto rationalismand dualism,and a stronginterest in romanticorganicism, all of whichcontrib- uted to the makingsof interpretativesociology. The affinity betweenthe two,however, was onlypartial: the interpretative thinkersrefused to endorse the irrationalismand antimod- ernismthat became the mainstreamof neoromanticismin this century,remaining closely attuned to the mediatoryspirit of romanticidealism. The extentof theirindebtedness to this spiritcan be gleaned fromthe numerousallusions scattered throughouttheir works. Diltheycredited Schleiermacher's hermeneutics as an inspi- rationfor his own culturalstudies. Simmel quoted extensively and approvinglyfrom the romanticsources and traced his notionof "qualitativeindividuality" to the romanticpremise thatthe individualis "a 'compendium'of mankind."Rickert repeatedlystressed that culturalsciences derived theircon- cepts fromthe German idealistphilosophers. Weber effec- tivelyendorsed romantic epistemology in his theoryof ideal type.And Mead creditedromantic idealists with the original insightinto the dialecticof selfand other. Philosophically,interpretative sociology can be seen as a systematicapplication of romanticidealism to social reality. The very formof Simmel'sfamous query "How is society possible?"reminds us of Kant's"How is naturepossible?" His answerwas thatthe objectivestructure of the social worldis isomorphouswith, and incomprehensiblewithout, the a priori formsof the mind,although in the case of social realitythe mindin questionis notjust thatof an externalobserver, of a sociologist,but the mindof historicalindividuals comprising a given society.In Simmel'swords, "Societal unification needs

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no factorsoutside its own componentelements, the individuals. . . . The unityof societyis directlyrealized by its own elementsbecause theseelements are themselvesconscious and synthesizingunits."92 The object of interpretativesocial science is "the mind-constructedworld" or social realityinsofar as it is broughtinto existence through the constitutive work of individualsconsciously generating the socialworld in termsof theirtaken-for-granted beliefs and values.This objectcalls for a specialmethod of inquiry,the methodof Verstehen,which is rootedin the assumptionthat "knowledge of culturalevents is inconceivableexcept on a basis of the significancewhich the concreteconstellations of realityhave for us in certaincon- crete individualsituations."93 The Americaninteractionists sounded a similarnote, contending that a keyquestion for a sociologiststudying human behavior- "What does it mean?" - can be answered only through "an imaginaryrecon- structionof life,"94that sociologistsshould not "follow. . . uncriticallythe example of the physicalsciences, [for] while the effectof a physicalphenomenon depends exclusivelyon the objectivenature of thisphenomenon . . ., the effectof the social phenomenondepends in addition on the subjective standpointtaken by the individualor the group.. . ,"95 The interpretativeapproach reveals the familiarcircular patternconsistent with the hermeneutical thesis that the whole mustbe understoodin termsof itsindividual parts, individual partsin termsof the whole.Like theirromantic predecessors, theinterpretative thinkers sought to bringinto one continuum mind,self, and society.Man, accordingto them,is a product and producer of society;society is social intercourseor a

92 Georg Simmel,Georg Simmel on Individualityand Social Forms(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 7. 93 Max Weber, The Methodologyof theSocial Sciences(New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 80. 94 C. H. Cooley, "The Roots of Social Knowledge," AmericanJournal of Sociology32 (1926): 68, 77. 95W. I. Thomas, W. I. Thomason Social Organizationand Social Personality:Selected Papers (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1966), p. 272.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 119 universeof discourse.Following the principlesof romantic hermeneutics,the interpretativethinkers shifted the focusof sociologicalinquiry from macro- to microsocialphenomena. They did not therebyabandon the studyof macrosocialfor- mations (as Weber's analysisof Westerncapitalism would readilytestify); they simply endeavored to telescopethese into the meaningfulactions of individuals: Suchconcepts as "state,""association," "feudalism," and the like designatecertain categories of humanactions. Hence it is the taskof sociologyto reducethose concepts to "understandable" action,that is, without exception to theactions of participating individualmen.96 Societyis certainlynot a substance,nothing concrete but an event.. . . The relationbetween society and theindividual is an organicrelation. . . . The mindis social,. . . societyis mental,. . . societyand themind are aspectsof thesame whole. . . .97

Given these substantiveparallels, one should not be sur- prisedto finda deep ideologicalaffinity between the proponentsof interpretativesocial scienceand theirromantic predecessors.The mediatoryspirit of romantichermeneutics per- meatesthe entireedifice of interpretativeand interactionist thought.It is evidentin Weber'srejection of the "ethicsof ultimateends" withits belief in the efficacyof the lastviolent deed and his undividedcommitment to the "ethicsof responsibility."It bulks large in Dewey's ethicsof means and his crusadeon behalfof "greatcommunity." It showsin Simmel's criticismof "negativefreedom" and Mead's advocacyof "in- ternationalmindedness." Inherent in the ideologicalpositions of all these thinkersis a longingfor social change free of violenceand revolutionaryupheavals, a desire to undermine the politicalappeal of the Rightand the Leftthat was on the

96 Max Weber, FromMax Weber:Essays in Sociology(New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 55. "' Charles Horton Cooley, Human ¡Matureand me òocial Urder (lyuz) (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), pp. 35, 81.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 120 SOCIAL RESEARCH rise at the time in both the Old and the New Worlds. We may recall that the principal task of the Vereinfür Sozialpolitikwas "to achieve by more conservative means the social justice at which the Marxists aimed. . . ."98 The same desire to rectify the injustices endemic to laissez-faireliberalism informs the progressiveagenda of American interactionists.To combat the ills of modernity,the latter openly used the romantic ploy of juxtaposing the idealized past to the conditionsof the present. The communityof the past theychose as a point of reference was not the medieval social order but the native,rural, Jeffer- sonian community, yet the virtues they ascribed to it- continuity,liberty, participation, cooperation- were the old romantic virtues of free discourse, of Gemeinschaft.German interpretativethinkers were less apt to invoke the vision of the golden past as an antidote to the wretched conditions of the present (in part because of the indiscriminateuse made of it by the neoromantics),but their critique of the "iron cage" of modern bureaucratic civilization had more than a tinge of nostalgia for the bygone era of the true Gemeinschaft. Whatever the differences,it was clearly the ideal of free discourse that inspired the political imaginations of interpretativethinkers on the Continent and in the United States. What these authors strained to assert is that, however alienated the social intercourse,it is stillour discourse,and it is up to us, the participantsin thisdiscourse, to change its course and to transformit into a truly"universal" discourse. We can do so, the interpretativethinkers believed, and we can do so withoutrecourse to violence, by subjectingto criticalexamination the rational grounds of our discourse, by reevaluating values and supplanting them with the new and more rational ones. To sum up, early-twentieth-centuryinterpretative sociology was an attempt to extend the principles of romantic her- meneuticsto the entiredomain of the social sciences. Its object

98 H. Stewart Hughes, Consciousnessand Society:The Réorientationof European Social Thought,1890-1930 (New York: VintageBooks, 1961),p. 294.

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 121 was the productionof social realityas objectiveand meaningful; its majorpremise - the interdeterminationof reason and society;its methodological tool - interpretativeunderstanding; and itsideal - freediscourse. With this shift in perspective,the focusof sociologicalanalysis became microscopic,not in the sense thatsociety as a wholemoved out of the reachof interpretativethinkers, but in the sense thatthe whole of society was to be systematicallyreduced to the predicativeactivities and rationalschemes of understandingemployed by its members.A prioricategories and valuesare the meansof productionof social realityas objectiveand meaningful;using them skillfullyand knowledgeably,members of society impart rational-logicalqualities to reality,wade throughthe uncer- taintiesof dailylife, confer on each othersocial status, and in the processof doing so perpetuatethe social order. To the participantsof socialintercourse this order appears as a thing in itself,a superhumanentity beyond their control and power. But thisis onlyan appearance.The social order,with all its rigiditiesand inequities,is a productof human intercourse which produces individualsas historicalindividuals at the same timethat it is produced by themas the historicaluni- verse of discourse.The structureof the social order is pe- riodicallyexploded by prophets and charismaticleaders whose reflexivepower liftsthe veils thrownover the transcendentaldomain of a prioribeliefs and values and forces humansto realizetheir responsibility for the way thingsare. The taskof interpretativesociology is to aid in thisprocess of démystification.But since this processnever ends - bringing downold reificationsclears the way for the new ones - thetask of interpretativesociology is a never-endingone. That is to say,démystification is a Sisypheanlabor thatmust begin anew themoment it is completed,and so thetask of hermeneutically groundedsocial scienceis to ensure that this transcendence remainsan ongoingendeavor. There is a characteristicfusion of the normativeand the descriptiveendemic to theproject of sociologicalhermeneutics

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 122 SOCIAL RESEARCH and manifestedin its idealistic approach that firstimputes a "true" essence to the individual and societyand then proceeds to demonstrate how this essence, perverted in the existent reality,can be recovered through self-consciousefforts of individuals. The individual, according to this mode of reasoning, is a species being, albeit reduced to a specimen; societyis discourse, albeit reified and compulsive. What is, is judged here by the standards of what ought to be, and what ought to be is proferredas an ideal that is bound to come about when men begin to live up to their true essence. This fusion of the normativeand the descriptiveis the legacy of transcendental idealism, the legacy inheritedby twentieth-centuryinterpretative thinkers and amply manifested in their abhorrence of violence, commitmentto libertyand order, and penchant for political mediation and meliorism.The interpretativethinkers did not abandon their trust in reason and peaceful means of social reconstruction when revolutions swept over Europe and violence seemed the only solution to the vexing problems of modernity.We have every reason to call their thinkingUtopian (in the sense in which the term was used by Mannheim), but we cannot deny their humanism or the rele- vance of their ideas to contemporarypolitical discourse. The hermeneuticalperspective on societyas a universe of discourse perpetuated by self-consciousindividuals reflects its proponents' profound trustin the freedom and dignityof man. It is an outlook permeated with humanisticvalues shared by those who believe in the possibilityof a communitythat combines unity and diversity. It is also an outlook that is flawed by certain biases, a perspectivewith blind spots of its own. If the social process is fundamentallya process of production of social reality as objective and meaningful,as interpretativesociologists imply, then the questions to ponder are: What are the means of production of social realityas objective and meaningful?Who controls these means of production? How is participationin social discourse affectedby one's status and class? How is the

This content downloaded from 131.216.164.152 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:28:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOCIOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS 123 process of universalizationand generation structured?Which are the historicallyspecific modes of production of social realityas objective and meaningful?All these questions are of paramount sociological importance. The failure to meet them head-on typical of much of interpretativesociology makes it vulnerable to the charges of an astructuraland conservative bias. Is this failure a legacy of romantic idealism? That the idealistic tendency to exaggerate the claims of reason, to mix the real withthe ideal, and to treatthe subject of the historical process as a unitaryphenomenon mighthave contributedto it is undeniable. That hermeneuticallygrounded social theoryis inherentlyincapable of answering these pertinentsociological questions is far from certain. A reexamination of Marx's romanticheritage now under way suggests that romantichermeneutics is not incompatible with class analysis." The cur- rent debate about Lukács's romanticperiod also points in this direction.100Anthony Giddens's work is one more example of recent attempts to combine structural and hermeneutical analysis.101Whether these effortswill bear fruitremains to be seen. One thingis clear, however: If interpretativesociology is to succeed as a full-fledgedsociological theory,it has to ad- dress these questions directly,that is, it has to deal withissues of inequalityand exploitation,and it has to maintaina fruitful dialogue with alternativesociological perspectives.

99 P. Breines, "Marxism, Romanticism,and the Case of Georg Lukács: Notes on Some Recent Sources and Situations,"Studies in Romanticism16 (1971). 100 Breines, "Marxism"; Löwy, GoergLukács. 101 Anthony Giddens, New Rules of SociologicalMethod: A PositiveCritique of Inter- pretativeSociologies (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

* This is a revisionof a paperpresented at the78th Annual Meeting of theAmerican SociologicalAssociation. I wish to expressmy gratitude to ProfessorsPeter Berger, Ira Cohen, David Zaret,and Lon Shelbyfor their comments on an earlierdraft.

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